Opinion: Planning reforms will silence Hucknall

Most people only think about planning when something is proposed near their home. At the moment, if a development is controversial, a district councillor can call it into a public planning meeting, where elected councillors debate it and vote. From 31 October, that democratic safeguard disappears.

Hundreds of residents could object. Their elected councillor could warn that a development is completely wrong for the area. Yet the decision could still be taken out of the community’s hands and kept out of the public committee room altogether.

Under the Government’s new nationwide rules, more planning decisions will be left to unelected planning officers. Even larger and more controversial schemes will start from the assumption that officers, rather than elected councillors, should decide them.

In plain English, the new default is simple: officers decide and a public vote becomes the exception. If the senior planning officer says no, the door to a committee hearing is effectively shut.

That is not local democracy. It is the Government taking power away from local people and telling them to live with the consequences.

Recently, I called in the proposed 16-apartment development at Chequers Yard on High Street so elected members could consider its scale, design, impact on the Conservation Area and neighbouring homes.

From 31 October, I will no longer have the independent power to ensure a development like that receives a public committee hearing.

A scheme dismissed as “small” on a Government spreadsheet can look very different when it lands next to your home. It can mean overlooking, parking chaos, drainage problems, traffic and more pressure on already stretched services.

The same applies to houses in multiple occupation. Where planning permission is needed for an HMO, what sounds like a simple change of use can mean more cars, more bins, more noise and constant comings and goings. Residents should not have to watch unsuitable family homes being carved up and crammed full while their elected councillor is stripped of the power to demand public scrutiny.

The Government says this will speed up planning. Yet 96 per cent of planning decisions in England are already delegated to officers. Call-ins exist for the exceptional cases where public scrutiny matters most.

I respect our planning officers. This is not an attack on them. It is about who holds the power and who is accountable when decisions permanently change a community.

We need more homes, but they must be the right homes, in the right places, with the roads, schools, doctors and drainage to support them.

Instead, these reforms risk making it easier for large developments to be pushed through while communities are told to get out of the way. That is particularly worrying when proposals affect valued green space, Green Belt land or the edge of existing neighbourhoods.

Once fields are built on, they are gone. Once roads are overloaded and services are stretched, residents are the ones left picking up the pieces.

The message increasingly appears to be: hit the targets, pave over the green space and to hell with the locals.

The Government should withdraw these rules, restore councillor call-in powers and stop treating residents as an obstacle to be managed.

Hucknall deserves development that works for Hucknall, not development done to Hucknall while the people who live here are pushed further away from the decisions that shape their community.

Cllr Lee Waters Ashfield District Councillor for Hucknall Central